Tobacco.org

• Smoking kills 33,000 Romanians every year 

In Romania there are nearly 6.5 M smokers (25 to 44 years of age) and 33,000 of them are killed every year by their vice that is the second global cause of death, the President of the National Anti-Drug Agency (ANA), Pavel Abraham, stated during a press conference marking the International Non-Smoking Day, yesterday.

According to a survey conducted by the European Commission in 2007, smoking is responsible for 75 per cent of heart strokes in smokers under the age of 50 and for 30 per cent of the deaths caused by the various forms of cancer.

The ANA official noted that the survey in question also found that most smokers, including in Romania, start smoking before the age of ten, mainly because of the insistent tobacco product advertising.

The same study shows that Romania and Austria are the least open to the introduction of smoking bans

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• The Eastern Cigarettes Underground 

This dialogue recurred dozens of times on the illegal cigarette route along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. A team of undercover reporters from the Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism (www.crji.org) together with Ukrainian colleagues tracked down smuggling routes through the European Union's Eastern borders.

Romanian and Ukrainian smugglers offered the investigative team duty-free cigarettes, illegally manufactured cigarettes, fake brands such as LML (an imitation of L&M) as well as legally produced Ukrainian cigarettes that illegally entered Romania through border check points or the so-called "green zone," the mountainous areas between them

Officials from both countries complain about the growing level of cigarette smuggling but little is done to stop it.

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• Driver stopped train for cigarette break 

A Romanian train driver is facing disciplinary action after he stopped his train to get out for a cigarette.

He stopped in the middle of the countryside and he also allowed passengers to get off the train.

Smoking was recently banned on trains in Romania, reports the Evenimentul Zilei newspaper.

The incident happened on the Blue Arrow, supposedly the country's fastest and most modern train

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• Romania hikes tobacco tax, big firms threaten exit 

Romania's leftist government decided on Thursday to raise cigarette taxes by around 20 percent, drawing a hostile response from foreign tobacco firms which threatened to shut their factories and leave the country.

Four of the world's top cigarette makers -- British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco , Philip Morris and Papastratos -- have joined forces to protest against the change.

The four say they are being punished for paying taxes, while state firm Tutunul Romanesc is effectively allowed to run up vast arrears.

And they accuse Romania's leaders of penalising the big foreign investors they need to kick-start an economy which has shrunk by a quarter in the past decade.

For its part, the government, which is finalising a tight 2001 budget that has to balance tax breaks for entrepreneurs with new revenue, says higher duty is needed to offset falling numbers of smokers.

But the cigarette firms said the real beneficiaries would be smugglers and warned few would be able to afford higher prices in a country where 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

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